LISA

"Who the hell can it be?" Kai twists his beer bottle between his fingers. "Jennie may claim it doesn't matter. That there's no reason for me to know, but not knowing is driving me mad."

It's been like this for days. Kai going nuts while, ironically, spending a lot more time at Mom's house than when Jennie was living here. While I'm relieved Jennie didn't tell him it's me she has feelings for, this is becoming equally unbearable. A few more days, and I might start seeing sense in telling him the absolute truth. For now, I can only hope it blows over. That he gets over the fact that his wife has feelings for 'someone else'. As far as I know, Jennie didn't tell Kai that she actually slept with this mysterious other person who is also me. That would probably drive him all the way up the wall.

"You were chummy with Jennie before she left." Kai pins his gaze on me. "She didn't tell you?"

I wish I could escape to Iowa as well. Maybe I should make something happen for myself. Look into the possibility of doing some promotion with Jisoo for our movie. Getting this part has given my professional confidence a massive boost. Damian might be able to arrange something for me—I've suddenly become one of his top clients. Production on the Jieun Lee project doesn't start for another few months. What am I going to do with myself until then? Not listen to my brother complain about his estranged wife, that's for sure.

"No," I lie, and I'm beginning to understand why Jennie couldn't bear to lie to him any longer. It's excruciating to have to do it over and over again to someone that you love with all your heart.

All of a sudden, an image of Mina pops into my head, but I push it away. It's not the first time memories of Mina and Seulgi—of the good times—have crept up on me, but I've always been able to quash them as soon as they appear. Things are a little different these days; what I did with Jennie has made me a touch more sympathetic to what they did to me.

"What's with you?" Kai says. "I thought you'd be over the moon, but you've been surprisingly crabby all week."

I miss her too, I think. "I'm worried about you guys." At least that's not a lie. "And I've been thinking about maybe getting in touch with Seulgi." Always a good idea to move the conversation away from Jennie.

"Seulgi? Okay." He doesn't dismiss my idea immediately although Kai has been just as furious with her as I've been for the past few years. "Can I tell you something?"

"Um, yeah." My heart starts thumping, because that's the other part of not telling the truth. You never know if the deceived person will put two and two together on their own. If they'll get a sudden flash of clarity and everything just reveals itself to them.

"I ran into Mina and Seulgi a couple of months ago. They asked about you. I told them about the Lana Lyn movie."

"You saw them? Where?"

"In the street. A few blocks from the office. They were having coffee."

"How, um, were they?"

"Fine, I guess. It was all a bit awkward, but, I mean, what they did was bad and how they treated you was awful, but they're good people at their core, otherwise they wouldn't have been so important to you for such a long time." He clears his throat. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm pretty sure they'd love to hear from you. You're in a good place right now. Why not see what happens when you get in touch?"

"Maybe." That's the fatherly part in him rearing its head. "I'll do that."

"Wasn't Jennie going to set you up with someone, by the way? Sana's niece or someone?" He scratches his five o'clock shadow. "Did she fail to see that through as well?"

There's no way I can possibly go on a blind date arranged by Jennie. "It fell through."

"Why? Are you saying this other woman wasn't interested in meeting Lisa Manoban? My one and only sister? Maybe I should talk to Sana." He narrows his eyes. "Hm, maybe I should meet up with her. She might know more about this mystery dude my wife has a crush on."

I don't know Sana well enough to be certain she can keep a secret, because I do know she knows about us. I have to assume she has Jennie's best interests at heart.

"Maybe you should just let it go, Kai."

"Let it go? That my wife is interested in someone else?" He slams down his beer bottle. "I really don't think so."

I wouldn't be able to let it go either. In fact, I know very well, in my heart of hearts, that one of the main reasons I've barely dated since Mina, is fear of it happening again. Of falling in love with someone, putting my trust in them, only to have them leave me for someone else again. I don't need years of therapy to figure that out. Not dating has just been easier than putting myself out there again. To love someone who loves someone else is one of the most devastating experiences. Because there's nothing you can do but wallow in the powerlessness of it all. You can't make someone love you. They either do or they don't. It's just a massive pity that the first woman I do have feelings for after all this time is the one woman I can't be with.

"You know what?" I may understand how Kai feels, but I can't sit here with him while he's in so much pain about his marriage falling apart—which I'm partially responsible for—any longer. That's even more mortifying than having the woman you love run off with your best friend. "I'll text Seulgi now."

"Go for it." Kai gets up. "I'm making dinner tonight."

While I search for Seulgi's number, which I'll have to unblock first, I watch Kai saunter into the house. Maybe he's just grieving, and he really believes that working on his house is pointless now that he and Jennie are on a break, but I can't shake the feeling that he's relieved about something as well. He's even making dinner.

I'm meeting Seulgi for coffee without Mina. There are limits to what my poor heart can take and in my hierarchy of hurt, Mina ranks higher, although it's practically neck-and-neck with those two.

"Oh, my god. Lisa!" She gets up when she sees me. "I'd love a hug, but I understand if it's out of the question."

I hug her because it feels damn good to have someone throw their arms around me who isn't Jennie, who fled to Iowa and whom I haven't heard from since we said goodbye—since that final kiss outside the bar.

"I was so glad you got in touch." She swallows hard. "I'm so very sorry." She brushes away the beginning of a tear.

How can I still be angry with her? Not only has time done its job of healing the most painful part of the wound she and Mina inflicted on me, but I now know what it feels like to betray a loved one. At least I know it's not a purely black-and-white situation.

"I saw you in Like No One Else. When you kissed Lana Lyn I didn't know what to do with myself. It was out of this world to see that. You were awesome, like you were born to play Cleo Paler."

"Thanks." Everything about being here with Seulgi reminds me of Jennie. She flipped out when she saw my character kiss Jisoo's character in that movie. That's probably when it all started. "It was an amazing experience. And Jisoo's so nice, like you can't believe. She's Jisoo Kim. She doesn't have to be nice to me, yet she was nothing but." I'm babbling, trying to chatter my guilt away. Maybe I'm not here to restore my former bond with my best friend. Maybe I'm only here looking for some sort of twisted absolution and she's the only one who can give it to me. "How have you been, Seulgi?"

"Good. Better now that I'm seeing you." The thing with Seulgi starting an affair with my girlfriend was that I never, not for one split second, believed she had that in her. She was always the best person I knew. Always full of kindness and endless patience and just sheer goodness. Now, I know that maybe everyone's capable of betraying the people that they love the most.

"How's Mina?" I can hardly pretend she doesn't exist.

"She's good." Seulgi reaches for her ring finger and fiddles with a ring, drawing my attention to the small diamond it holds. "Please don't think it was easy for us. It wasn't, but we had each other, while you…"

"I didn't even have my best friend." I lean over the table. "Is that what I think it is?" I point at the ring on her finger.

"Yes," she says on a sigh, as though this is a bad thing. "We're getting married."

Although it's the most common action people take after they've been together a few years, the news still stumps me. "Wow. Congratulations."

"Thank you." She tilts her head. "How about you, Lisa? Are you seeing someone?"

"Me? No."

"For real? After that movie? Surely women are throwing themselves at you by the dozen wherever you go."

"No, they really aren't." Only Jennie did. "Can I ask you a potentially difficult question?"

"Of course. Ask me anything, Lisa. Anything you want." Her gaze softens. "I've missed you so much. Maybe it's not my place to say, but fuck, I miss you. Just sitting here with you… despite all that has happened, something about it just feels right, because it's you. Because I've known you forever and you're so familiar to me."

Maybe I'm carrying too much guilt, or still too much residual hurt, to feel the same way. "I've missed you too," I say, because I have missed some parts of being friends with her. "But I'd just like to know how… you and Mina… how you learned to deal with the guilt? How you got over what you did to me?"

She inhales deeply. "The thing is that it didn't feel as though we were doing anything to you. We fell in love, and it was hurtful to you in so many ways, all of them inexcusable, because we should have waited." She brushes away another tear. "I regret many things, but that I regret the most. That we carried on behind your back as though you were just anyone. Not that it's ever the right thing to do, but you were my best friend. But in the end, we couldn't stop how we felt. We tried, but… either way, Mina couldn't stay with you and…"

"Then she might as well have ended up with you."

"To put it bluntly." She closes her eyes briefly. "Many mistakes were made. Too many."

"And now you're getting married." What they did no longer hurts me, although I might never be able to forgive them. Or does one require the other? Can I not forgive them because, on some level, it does still hurt me?

Seulgi nods.

"In hindsight, was it really never an option for you to break things off with Mina? Because of me?"

"There are always options and, in hindsight, that's what I should have done."

"But then what?"

"In that case, I think Mina would have broken up with you and maybe, after an appropriate amount of time, we would have gotten together again. Or not. It's impossible to say. Things should not have gone down the way they did. I will always be sorry for that, but, I don't know, it's like part of me knows that I was always going to end up with Mina. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's the only way I can explain it to myself. That she's the one, and I knew. I felt it in my bones, and it made me do things I would never otherwise have done to a friend. At least I never thought I would. It's not an excuse. There are no excuses, but sometimes, life is just painful like that, and you have to lose someone… for love."

Once again, I'm stumped. I truly don't know what to say to that.

"I will never be so foolish to ask for your forgiveness, Lisa. I don't deserve it, because I was your best friend and I should have had your back. I should have nipped it all in the bud when I still could, but I wasn't strong enough. I chose Mina and myself over you and I'll have to live with that for the rest of my life, but, um…"

"It was worth it," I say.

"How can I say otherwise? Things might not have worked out between Mina and me and then I would have lost it all too, but that's not how it went. We're a good couple. I know how much you loved her and maybe if we—"

"Please, Seulgi, stop. I know I asked, but I'm not sure I can take any more of this."

"Oh god. I'm sorry."

"No, look, I get it. I do. It's an impossible situation to be in and you chose yourself and, frankly, why shouldn't you have?" It's not like I'm your sibling.

"It's not as clean cut as that, Lisa. It wasn't a coldhearted, spur-of-the-moment decision. It was a long and arduous process and something we still struggle with to this day. We bumped into your brother not so long ago and that set us off again… We may have found this great love, but what we did to you will always come between us in one way or another. But maybe that's not so unlike most relationships. That's how I've learned to live with it. There's always something. That kind of purity is an illusion."

Good for you, is my first thought, but I can no longer, in good faith, be so callous with my thoughts. I lost that right when I kissed Jennie for the first time.